Pittsburghers know that the times are out of joint. Somehow they're expecting the prosperity to blow up in their faces.
Fortune Magazine, 1941

Friday, October 28, 2011

Pittsburgh is as Pittsburgh Works

I recently brought up the location quotient methodology and looked at what some location quotients were for Pittsburgh. You can use the LQ methodology in lots of ways. You most often see it used to measure industry concentration, but no reason it can be used to measure occupation concentration as well. For both LQ's are typically benchmarked against the nation, but could be used lots of different ways. Again, a LQ of 1.0 means that the concentration of something locally is the same as for the nation. A LQ of 2.0 would mean we are twice as conentrated as the nation.

So I was just looking at some occupational employment numbers for Pittsburgh and see that the BLS is now doing what a lot of us used to have to calculate on our own and has an occupational employment LQ for most all occupations they report data on at the MSA level.

The obvious question is what occupations have the highest LQ's here in Pittsburgh. For years I used to say that it was in Nuclear Engineers where in the past I had calculated an unbelievable LQ of over 8.0. Here is what I get now for the top LQ's by occupation in Pittsburgh:

So Nuclear Engineers are not number 1 technically any longer. Not because of any slowdown at Westinghouse of course, but I think over the last decade there has been a drawdown in the workforce at Bettis which is really what is driving that number. Still a lot of nuclear engineers, possibly the largest absolute numbers in any MSA for the nation, just a slip in the local concentration.

Still a lot of interesting factoids popping out of that one graphic. I think my colleagues may be single handedly responsible for the high LQ for "Survey Researchers". The "Private Detectives and investigators" I was going to say I have no idea about, but I think its the OPM contractors who do work for DoD out of Butler County are impacting that. Still you see the core steel occupations in there including "Metal Pourers and Casters". Pittsburgh as sports town results in our overconcentration of "Locker room, coatroom and dressing room assistants". Finally... at the bottom, but "Title examiners, abstractors and searchers". Our big Marcellus Shale impact? A few other occupations might be Marcellus induced as well: wellhead pumpers? Mining still having an impact, but remember this still is coal country and I bet some of those occupational numbers are being driven by NETL.

I'm sure it does but the question would be how many. Inpatient treatment is a relatively low volume service compared to outpatient services that are more likely to be provided in smaller towns. Depending on how the term is defined, it could get draw in various workers in nursing facilities and that might also play a role.